In many places in this great land of ours, teenagers spend Friday and Saturday nights "shooting the loop" or doing something similar. They drive around, look at the girls, look at the boys, maybe stop at Dairy Queen to see who's there. Get back in the car. Rinse, lather, repeat.

If it wasn't for shooting the loop, the movie “American Graffiti” would be an hour shorter.

Forty years ago in Springfield, kids did the same thing, but with a twist. They played “Sink the Capitol.”

Never heard of it? I first heard about it a few days ago when Marie Carnes posted a video of it on YouTube that was linked from her weblog Disarranging Mine. Marie's is one of the local blogs I read regularly. I also try to guess what song she is referencing in the title of her entries. I'm right maybe 70 percent of the time.

As she explains Sink the Capitol, you drive down Walnut Street and then turn east on Capitol Avenue. As you get closer to the Statehouse dome, it slowly sinks out of view behind the Stratton Building. Sink the Capitol.

Marie does narration on her video as the dome sinks slowly in the east: “We started doing this in the early '70s when we got our driver's licenses,” she says. “As far as I know, it's a game for Springfield kids that has been passed down through the generations.”

I contacted her, and she said she thought the game was created by Howard Pence. Howard is Lanphier High School, Class of 1964 (50th reunion this year!) but lives in Pawnee now. I left him a voice mail. When he called back, he had me repeat my message because he wasn't sure he heard right.

I said I was calling about Sink the Capitol. “That's what I thought you said,” Howard replied. Then he started laughing. He asked me where in the world I heard about that? After I explained, he said he was not the originator.

The person who actually invented the Sink the Capitol game is unknown. It's not unusual. Nobody knows which teenager was the first to drive the loop in your town, do they? See, it's the important stuff like this that is lost to history. It's a shame, really.

Howard said he heard about the game in about 1975. “I can't tell you much about it,” he said, “except that I was at Two Brothers Lounge downtown and someone said, ‘Hey, let's go play Sink the Capitol!' I said, ‘What the heck are you talking about?'

“This has been so many years ago. But since then I showed it to a few people.”

Page 2 of 2 - I asked if he remembered the names of those people at Two Brothers. That led me to Gail Adamski, since she was one of them.

“Ha, ha! How do you know about that!!???” Gail said. There was a lot of that going around on this one. And so I explained it again. She laughed. There was a lot of that, too.

So, Gail, did you create the Sink the Capitol game?

“I don't think I can claim the fame of inventing it,” she said. “It's Springfield trivia. It's like a secret club. We should have a reunion!

“I don't know who started it. It was something that just happened. It was just ... the planets had to be aligned or something.”

Did a lot of people do this back in the day? “Nobody in their right mind,” Gail said.

I thought maybe it was just a Lanphier thing, but Gail said no, she was from Southeast High. “And I'll bet the kids at Springfield High knew about it because they were right next to it,” she added.

I watched the video and found out that things have changed since this game was invented. The state has built landscaping to the west of the Stratton Building, making Capitol Avenue stop shorter than it used to. That means people playing the game can no longer completely sink the Capitol.

Insert your own Illinois state legislature joke here.

Know of something quirky? Emotional? Funny? Inspiring? Dave Bakke is your man and his deadline is always near. Pitch your idea to him at dave.bakke@sj-r.com or at 788-1541. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. To read more, visit www.sj-r.com/bakke.